[Social] Paying for Tuesday's Beers

[Will Stanton]

Will shook his finger back and forth. "Uh-uh. Not my turn for show and tell. You are the one who must undergo the Test of Tales now."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

Thrax sighed and gobbled up the rest of his food. "Alright, fine, I'll tell you. But not here. Too many people around, not that I expect the general public would believe me anyway."

[Will Stanton]

"You seem to have a strong aversion to acting in public," Will noted. "Performance anxiety? Aphonia paralytica? Buck fever?"

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Hah! No, I love attention. Just not the kind that gets governments involved," he said cryptically.

[Will Stanton]

"The government is in this diner right now?" Will asked, looking around. "I would have thought I would have noticed them."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

In that moment, it became obvious that he had let the warning about keeping what he was to himself get in his head. Fear and paranoia weren't him. He looked around the diner one last time before releasing a nervous chuckle. "Okay, okay, I give."

He exhaled. "My full name is Thraxion Ord'Rakar. The truth is that I'm not a mutant. Believe it or not, I'm not even from this planet. I sort of, well, crashed my ship. Your headmistress offered to help me try to fix it, so I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future. She warned me against making myself known any more than necessary."

"Of course," he chuckled ruefully, "I'm, so far, completely failing at keeping it from you University people. Robin saw right through me."

"As for why I'm in this part of the galaxy at all..." He hesitated; his past wasn't something he enjoyed talking about. While he wasn't going to lie, he wasn't going to reveal any more than he had to. "I needed a place to lay low without all the drama of other spacefarers. Obviously, things aren't any less chaotic for you here, but no one I've managed to piss off is going to look for me here."

[Will Stanton]

"Now, that sounds like a story worth telling," Will grinned. "You've introduced the cast, now I'm eager to hear the tale. And remember, you are being judged," she said, flashing teeth.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

The alien groaned. "You aren't going to let up until I tell you who I'm hiding from, are you?"

[Will Stanton]

"I'm not going to give up until you tell me a story worth telling," Will grins.

"I don't even care if it's true or not -- but I just spent 15 minutes carefully and methodically disposing of someone on your trail, and all I asked for in return was an interesting tale. And so, I am listening. Or perhaps I'll have to pick up where the X-Man left off."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

Thrax wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to avoid talking about his tragic backstory; it only ever caused problems or—worse—pity. He just had to make it entertaining.

"Awesome. Entertaining bullshit it is. Or is it?" He smirked, leaving it in the air whether or not he was going to tell the truth.

"So, before I had my own ship, I was doing security work on a freighter—nothing high-paying but I take the work I can get. Anyway, halfway into the journey the ship alarm starts blaring something awful and just moments later—BANG!—a boarding craft pierces the deck right down the corridor from where I'm standing. Seconds later, well-armed pirates spill forth and start cutting down anyone who resists. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not one to simply turn a blind eye to people dying around me and, besides, I was getting paid for exactly this sort of thing."

"So, I power up my tiruga—sortof a multipurpose melee weapon and musical instrument in one, from my home planet—and rush to intercept this ugly blue thug about to overpower Gracia, the ship officer I answer to. Also, having a tawdry casual fling with, but that's another story. I take him down and, after a vehement denial that she needed help in the first place, we team up to press back the boarders. That is, until the comms crackle on and a rough voice announces they've taken the bridge."

He paused to gauge Will's response.

[Will Stanton]

Will nodded, enthralled by Thrax's storytelling. "Was it an inside job?"

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

Thrax tapped his nose. "Exactly."

"It's the only way they could have taken the ship so fast. We both know it. Well, okay, she knows it. She's ready to cooperate with their demands but I said 'fuck that.' I have no interest in letting bastards like these get away with this." His body language suggested that the response was deeply personal, that he had seen that level of violence before.

"So, after some passionate rousing of convictions by yours truly, we hatch a plan. She knows the ship like the back of her hand, so she knows how to get around without the pirates seeing. Together, we assemble a rag-tag resistance network of reliable crew members and set our plan in motion."

"First, our systems tech hijacks the security feeds and makes it so no one in the security stations can see anything we do. Then we start picking off the boarders. Now, I'm not built for stealth, but luckily one of us has the ability to cloak those around him so getting the drop on them was easy. That was, until we come up against a pirate belonging to a canine race. He sniffs us out and our nice ambush becomes a race to take the group out before they get word to the others."

"I, being the best match for him, take on the canine. Unfortunately for him, he has no powers. But, unfortunately for me, he's wearing tech that absorbs energy and that makes my weapon no more than a blunt object. So, we settle matters the old fashioned way, with fists and claws and the baring of fangs. I get pretty bloodied but I have one advantage left."

"I bite him." He smirked devilishly. "Like your Earth hyena, we Crocutans have incredibly strong jaws. I feel his arm break between my teeth and, soon after, the fight is over. All that's left is taking back the bridge."

[Will Stanton]

"Ooh, grody and visceral. Much more barbaric than I would have thought from first glance; I like those inner depths.

And then, you burst onto the bridge?"

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

Thrax shrugged at the 'barbaric' comment. "In a fight with someone who wants you dead, you use the weapons you have because they will certainly use theirs," he quoted.

"Anyway, yeah, the bridge. We rush in—cloaking isn't as useful when the enemy can see the door open— predictably finding the ship's captain with a blade to his throat. Gracia attempts to trade the captured pirates for the captain and the ship but the pirate captain would rather lose his men than surrender his prize. However! That's when we use our secret weapon. They may have disabled our guns, but we have a surprise for them. Our men in the cargo hold send a few select pieces of our haul out of the airlock at velocity, straight at the enemy vessel. They're too close to get away before the impact rips into their hull, doing catastrophic damage."

"I may have done a little too much victory taunting, because when the pirate captain vowed revenge over the vid-comm he was definitely looking right at me. I thought it was just posturing at the time but, a few months after I left hat job behind, I run into the damned mutt whose arm I broke in a bar. Next thing I know I'm taking the ship I just won in a card game and fleeing as far as I can go before I get myself murdered."

[Will Stanton]

"And that's when you ran here? A little backwater planet no one will pay much mind to?"

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Assuming all of that wasn't bullshit, yes." The big guy smirked. Parts of the story were perfectly true, at least. There had been a freighter gig, a woman named Gracia, and a pirate attack. But was he instrumental in fighting them off? That was debatable. And it definitely wasn't what he was hiding from.

[Will Stanton]

Will waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, it doesn't matter if it's bullshit or not. If it's your story, that's the one I wanted to hear."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Great!" He grinned happily. "We're even then?" he inquired.

[Will Stanton]

"I'd say so, yes," Will nodded. "A very solid tale; one worth currency in most Courts."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Okay, you're gonna have to explain what in the Storm's name your talking about. I assume you don't mean a court of law."

[Will Stanton]

"Right, OK," Will said, taking a deep breath. "I mean, I do mean a court of law, occasionally, but that would be intentionally deceiving. No, I'm talking about the courts of the fae.

...Specifically, the courts of the fae in an alternate dimension, and the rules almost certainly work differently here, because that's how they operate.

But the fae self-sort into seven distinct courts. Well, four distinct courts, with two subsets of each, except for the Winter courts which....no, we don't talk about them much. And that's before you get into the seven color groupings, which are an entirely separate function on top and behind everything else. And these courts organize our society, and decide who is aligned with who and what we are at any point in time.

The Spring courts all all about high society, and glamour, and endless balls, and all the melodrama about what happens at those balls. Politics. Political intrigue. Lords and Ladys of this and that and the whatnot, all in a very elaborate pageant where the rules are constantly changing. And that's separated into High and Dark, as are all the other seasons -- except for Winter, of course -- with the High courts taking a faux-paus and turning it into a multi-decade long plan of embarrass you later. The Dark Spring court is more likely to just cut your throat for bowing too slowly. Or too quickly, for that matter.

The Summer courts are the big heroic adventure people. Epic romances, mournful tragedies, comedies and melodramas. That's where your Heroes are, in the classical sense. Duels and everything. And the Dark Spring is where you get your ogres, and your trolls, and your grinding bones to make bread and all that. They play big, they act big.

The Fall courts are all about change. And exchange. We all do deals, but the Fall courts live for them. They're the ones it's dangerous to haggle and bargain with, because they've been doing this a lot longer than you have, and are better at it. But if you navigate the treacherous waters, you get rewarded handsomely. All fae are about change, but the Fall court is change.

Winter.... we don't talk about winter.


And that, again, is before you get to the seven colors, which are more of a secondary, backup set of identities. The Seasonal Courts have always been in charge since time began. And it's been that way since the 1960s, when there was a major civil war that changed which group was running the show."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

The information was certainly new and interesting, if a bit confusing and deeply illogical. Did Earth really have such flamboyant, mystical creatures traipsing about behind the scenes? The Summer ones would have seemed like his kind of people if not for the nobility nonsense that reminded him far too much of the Shi'ar. But, preceding all these thoughts was one giant question...

"Uh... What's a Fae, though? We don't—uh—have those."

[Will Stanton]

"The fae? We're what goes bump in the night. The ones who remember the value and power in words, and the rocks, and the trees and the grass. We are the fair folk, the wee folk. The fallen angels; the risen demons; the people behind the curtain and the speakers for the dead. The Seelie and Unseelie and the oil that keeps the gears of the world turning.

If you think you don't have fae...then you just haven't seen one yet."

Good. That was a helpful explanation.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

The alien just smirked teasingly. "And I thought the Shi'ar were full of themselves."

[Will Stanton]

"The Shi'ar just think they should run the universe."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"And the Fae believe they already do? Well that's just the definition of humble." He smirked.

"But, hey! Humility is overrated. I, myself, am pretty great. Even if I've got very little to show for it, just a ship, a tiruga, and the clothes I showed up in."

[Will Stanton]

"You said that middle one was....some sort of musical instrument?"

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"It's a battlestaff with hard-light capabilities, projecting different blades and even has a stringed instrument mode. I'm sure you're wondering why a musical instrument; that's because it serves as a conduit to strengthen my powers. Though that's more training than anything it actually does."

"I, uhh, didn't tell Minamida it was a weapon."

[Will Stanton]

"I'm actually interested in how it's a musical instrument, but you said you didn't want to stand out too much. We'll table that until you're not in public."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"I mean, I don't have it with me right now anyway." The big guy chuckled.

With a grin, he then asked, "Wanna swing by my room and see it?"

[Will Stanton]

"I think you've got your order of events wrong. At least here on Earth, you invite someone to you room before you rail them."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"You weren't complaining at the time," he smirked. "But, hey, chalk it up to culture shock."

"Now, do you want to see alien tech or not?"

[Will Stanton]

Will checked her wrist, where a watch might go.

"Eh, why not. Let's see what you're packing."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

After Will payed the bill with what Thrax suspected was clay money, the two set off back through the portal. The alien led the way to the public housing building and up the stairs to the third floor and into a small, minimally furnished apartment that was really just one room with a closet and a small bathroom. But Thrax had crashed in far worse places and honestly the living space on his ship wasn't much bigger.

"Welcome to my home away from home, as it were," he said as he went to the closet. He took out a long, guitar-like object that currently had no strings and gave it a playful test twirl as he turned to Will. With the press of a hidden button—and a biometric scan—strings of hard-light came into being. He plucked one, producing a sound very much like a slightly distorted electric guitar but without any need for an amp.

[Will Stanton]

"Impressive!" Will said, impressed. "It just...creates the strings out of nowhere, and it interacts with your hands? Is it a physical thing, or is it, like bioelectric interference patterns being interpreted as sound waves?"

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Oh, it's physical. Nothing beats the tactile response of claws on string," he said with a fond smile as he ran a finger along one string. "Granted, the sound isn't made by the string itself. More of a digital interpretation of the way I touch it, trying to reconstruct what the ancient analog version sounded like."

[Will Stanton]

"Your species must be an old one, then, if something like this has been the standard for so long."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"We have a couple of millennia on you, yeah. And we had a profound contact with a visitor from the stars that greatly accelerated our development both culturally and scientifically. Before her we only knew chaos and violence."

It killed him inside that those days had returned in the blink of an eye, threatening to wipe away thousands of years of progress. But, as healthy as it would be to be able to talk about it with someone, he couldn't stand the idea of being pitied. Besides, it didn't feel right to burden someone he barely knew with his baggage.

[Will Stanton]

"Well, maybe we'll get there eventually. We can progress fast when we put our minds to it."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"I gathered as much from your Wikipedia. Your world has grown incredibly fast over the last hundred years. Keep that pace up and you'll catch up in no time... relatively speaking. Assuming you can get your more self-destructive impulses under control." And, boy, did that condescension make him feel like a huge hypocrite both racially and personally.